Pull-Tab Books

Dean & Son were the first to publish books that were animated by pulling diagonal tabs. Little Folks Living Nursery Rhymes in Moving Pictures (late 1860s) was one of the earliest titles. Not much later, these Pull-Tabs were also produced by Raphael Tuck (e.g. Slovenly Peter, ca 1890) and Ernest Nister (e.g. What a surprise, ca 1900).

A French Pull Tab called Deux Bonne Camarades (1890s)

There is little doubt that the most ingenious movable books ever produced were those of the German Lothar Meggendorfer, made during the 1880s and 1890s. His mechanisms and operations as well as his originality, are far superior to any other's published before or since. The devices that operate the various figures in Meggendorfer's books consist of a series of cardboard levers, inter-connected with copper-wire rivets, sandwiched between the coloured illustrations on the front and the dummy pasted behind it. The animated limbs and heads are cut-out models on the front of the picture, and moving the tab sets the whole scene in motion.